Doing your civic duty never paid so well: How councillors' payouts have soared as local services face savage cuts

Thousands of local councillors have seen their allowances soar in the past five years, astonishing figures reveal.

The town hall payouts have risen by up to 150 per cent to a total cost of more than £200million a year.

The statistics will intensify anger over spending cuts at local authorities. Many warn that they are being forced to close libraries, swimming pools and leisure centres to save money.

Elaborate: While local services face cuts, town hall councillors, including those who work in Birmingham, have been collecting huge allowances

A separate study yesterday revealed that half of council chiefs earn more than the Prime Minister. And critics suggest there is excess spending that can be curbed before services to the elderly and children or sports facilities are cut.

According to the most recent figures, extracted from local authority accounts, a substantial number of council leaders are paid more than £50,000 – and it is no longer unusual for the average councillor’s allowance to total more than £20,000.

The highest single increase over the past five years was at Rochford council in Essex, where allowances increased by 158 per cent – almost ten times the rate of inflation over the same period.

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In several other areas the amounts paid to councillors have doubled or gone up by two or three times the rate of inflation. The average increase across 400 councils in England and Wales since 2005, was about 25 per cent.

Local Government Minister Grant Shapps said: ‘It is not justifiable for hikes in councillor allowances when public sector workers are facing a two-year pay freeze. We’re all in this together, and those who hold public office need to lead by example.

The minister, whose Communities Department is pressing council bosses to cut officials’ pay and make efficiency savings, added: ‘Councillors must remain arms-length volunteers. It will be harmful for local democracy if they become the bankrolled staff of the town hall dependant on the municipal pay packet.’

Expenses were first made available to local politicians in the 1970s – and in the 1990s, allowances, or pay, for councillors were introduced to reimburse local councillors for their time. But the effect has been to produce a generation of professional town hall politicians.

Expenses claims: Birmingham City Council Tory leader Mike Whitby received £72,214 last year

There has been growing anger over local authority spending. A series of Labour councils have threatened to shut down services from help to the elderly to libraries, blaming Government cuts. Unions yesterday put the total number of council jobs at risk at 160,000.

Last week, Liberal Democrats from 88 town halls joined the protest and called on the Coalition to ease the financial pressure on councils. They said town halls use money efficiently and cannot afford the high cost of sacking workers.

The latest figures were revealed in accounts published by local authorities last year.

They contain unprecedented detail on salaries and allowances. They have already shown that half of all town hall chief executives are on pay in excess of the £142,500 a year earned by David Cameron.

In big cities local politicians rake in sums similar to those earned by successful professionals in other walks of life. For instance, last year Birmingham’s Tory leader Mike Whitby claimed £72,214.

His Liberal Democrat deputy Paul Tilsley, who was one of the party’s protestors last week, was paid £58,602 by the taxpayer last year.

Birmingham alone spent more than £3million in councillors’ pay last year. On average, each of the authority’s elected members was paid nearly £26,000.

Although Milton Keynes, one of the LibDem-led councils in last week’s protest, maintains it has no fat in its budget to cut without harming services. Yet since 2005 it has put up councillors’ allowances by 67 per cent.

Over the same period, the Bank of England calculates that inflation pushed up prices by 16 per cent.

Overall, since 2005 the bill for paying elected councillors has gone up from £170million to almost £210 million – a rise of more than 20 per cent.

But as local politicians have enjoyed pay rises far above the rate of inflation, millions of workers in private industry have been enduring pay freezes or cuts.

Some councillors are claiming allowances from numerous bodies at once. According to a breakdown of allowances paid to Hampshire county councillors put together by the Is It Fair? council tax protest group, dozens have more than one source of allowances.

Yesterday, campaigners criticised the rising allowances. Christine Melsom of Is It Fair? said: ‘I can’t afford to pay for this and nor can anybody else. You can’t really tell how much councillors are getting because it is virtually impossible to work out how much they are paid by different bodies.’

Emma Boon of the Taxpayers’ Alliance said: ‘It is shocking to see that councillors’ allowances have inflated at such an alarming rate in recent years.

‘They are working in areas where there are huge pressures on the public finances and savings need to be found – so it is unfair that they are paying themselves so much.

‘Councillors’ allowances need to be frozen to ease the burden on taxpayers who pay them, it’s simply unsustainable for them to rise at twice the rate of inflation.’

Terry Cutmore, Tory leader of Rochford in Essex, which has recorded the highest percentage increase in its spending on allowances, said the pay had been set, as elsewhere, by an ‘independent remuneration committee’.

He said: ‘They looked at the average for councils in Essex and they noted that our allowances were very much lower. We also moved to a cabinet system, and cabinet members have higher allowances.

‘We have kept the allowances at the same level since 2009.

‘I get more then anybody else because I am leader, but this is a full-time job. I retired from my job in 2004 at 52 to do this, and I can tell you I don’t get much social life.’

Rochford spent £287,000 on allowances last year, which amounts to 2.5 per cent of its entire £11.3million spending budget. By contrast, it spent £199,000 on grants for equipment to help the disabled, and £447,000 on leisure and play facilities.

The GMB union, which has been tracking council announcements on the impact of the Government’s spending cuts, said 162,000 jobs are under threat at 290 authorities.

General secretary Paul Kenny said: ‘Frontline services for the most vulnerable people in our society are being affected by the cuts. The impact for those who depend on these services will be devastating. Some services, like meals on wheels in some authorities, are now only available to those at death’s door.’